It’s probably only if you live under a rock that you haven’t noticed that it’s Award Season out there in business.

There are so many business awards happening right now and loads to enter for sure – they range from the big ones like Telstra to smaller more niche ones like the local awards or podcast awards.

As some of you may or may not know, I recently hosted the first ever Australian Rural Business Awards with my business partner in Spend With Us – Buy From a Bush Business.

The event was held virtually, and it was an outstanding success.  It was just so good to celebrate everything that’s rural and regional small business.

But since then, I have had a flood of emails from the winners, those who came third or second and even finalists saying “thank you for hosting the awards, but what do I do now” – asking how they can leverage them being a finalist or a winner to help promote their business, bring more brand awareness to their business and so forth.

Hence this blog post on how to leverage awards – and it’s great reading whether you are the winner or a finalist or just feel like a winner!

And one big pro tip – if applying for awards isn’t in your marketing strategy – then make it part of your marketing strategy!  Seriously, if you want cred in your space, if you want to become the “go to person” in your industry, or if you simply want to “up” your competitors and stand out from the crowd – then entering awards is 100% the way to go!  Not only do you get leverage, but honestly, a big part of what you will benefit from applying for awards can be found in doing the applications. Seriously!

By taking time to look back at what you have achieved, where you have come from to where you are now – that’s probably going to give you the most joy.  In business we rarely take time to reflect and look back at how far we have come – so if you get nothing else from applying for awards, you will 200% get that!

As to leveraging your award nomination or win – let’s say you have been nominated by someone, or you are a finalist or the award winner (YAY) what now?

How can you leverage the crap out of it to help build your business?  Get more brand awareness, build creditability, and potentially and hopefully get more sales.

Here is a list to get you started:

1. As a finalist, winner, runner up etc, the award host will probably send you a logo or a tile/image to use.  This is your licence to add that just about everywhere you can think of!

• Your LinkedIn profile – in the banner, in the awards section
• On Facebook – again in the banner/cover and in the About section
• Instagram – in your bio
• Twitter – in your profile
• Pinterest – in your profile
• In your email signature or at the foot of your emails – how many of them do you send out a day!
• Add to your website – in the about section, on the front page, in the footer

1. Where can you leverage the words “Award Winning” or if you won more than one “Multi Award Winning” business? Update your bios, website pages, if you have a place of business, on the front window, at reception, on your door, in your “out of office” notice – if you can swing those words in – they do it!
2. Think about the directories your business is listed in – go and change those. Use the words “Award Winning” or use the graphic/tile/image mentioned above.  You might need to google yourself or google your business name to find all the places that need to be updated!
3. Make a bio photo in Canva with the words “Award Winner” or put the name of the award you won, under your bio photo. Then you can use that photo to update all your bios across social media platforms too.  If you need a hand to do this, then put a post in a Facebook group or two asking if someone can help you and what they would charge.  Or go to Fiverr and ask there.
4. When posting about your win on social media – don’t forget to tag and congratulate the other winners, finalists and people in your category. Not only is it good to be humble, but it’s good for brand awareness to be tagging other businesses (ok, that’s not exactly humble, but it’s business and we want the most out of this win!).
5. Think about adding the win to your business cards and brochures – if they are electronic, then do it straight away, if they are printed, do it for the next round of printing.
6. If you do presentations, webinars, or your work requires you to introduce yourself, make sure you add “award winner” to that introduction. Not only just after you’ve won the award – but at least for a few years.
7. If the award hosts didn’t supply you with a press release – then write one yourself! Getting your win into the media is a fabulous idea and isn’t going to be that hard.  If you need help with a press release – sing out, happy to share what I have – jenn@jenndonovan.com.au – but most awards will supply one.  Simply sending an email to your local newspaper, local radio station or local ABC station will probably result in some media attention – written or spoken (radio).  Even if you feel nervous, do it anyway!
8. Sit down and write a blog for your website about your win. Use parts of your award-winning application to construct a blog about your business, the ups the downs, the highs, the lows and share it with your community.
9. Write an email to your list telling them the good news and thanking them for supporting your now award-winning business!
10. Go live on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or whichever platform you perform best on or do them all! Share about your win and say thank you to your community who have helped you and your business thus far.  Spread these lives out of a few days – different platform, different day.
11. Share the win in Facebook groups.
12. Use this award-winning application to apply for more awards! And use the win as a fabulous excuse to pitch yourself for podcast interviews, guest blogs and articles and so on.

All this might seem a little too much self-promotion to some.  But you have to honestly leave that feeling behind and make the fact that you won or were a finalist, you took the time to fill out the application and the judged loved you, something to celebrate!

Your community, your audience, followers, likers, really all they want to do is congratulate you and tell you how proud they are.

The people who think you are “full of it” or “talking about it too much” are simply either jealous or definitely not your people.

You don’t need to do all this straight away – although lots of it you should – you can milk this win/finalist thing for months and even in 12 months use it as a “remember when”.

Awards have credibility.  Awards have a long shelf life – so your win should have a long shelf life too.

And remember winning isn’t everything – even being a finalist needs to have the heck leveraged out of it!

You can do this.

Push down the imposter syndrome, get over the “what will they think” and sing loud and proud about your win and how amazing your business is.  Because it is!

Want to chat or need some encouragement?  Head into my Like Minded Business Owners Facebook group – put up a post there, tag me and I will encourage and nudge away!

You’ve got this!

Oh and again, as I said at the start if entering awards isn’t on your marketing strategy list – then it’s time it was.

If you need to have a chat about this strategy, book a Discovery call – https://calendly.com/jenn-smm/discovery and we can work through it together.

Let’s continue the chat in my Like Minded Business Owners Facebook group – you can join on Facebook if you haven’t already.

In my Like Minded Business Owners Facebook group I have some amazing guests coming in there to do lives with me this year.  I am super excited by this.  From finance experts to PR and marketing experts (besides me) to Law experts – they are all coming on to give you their time and do some Q&As with the group.

CONTACT JENN:

Don’t forget, if you are looking for some help on strategy around an award nomination or win, then I’d love to help you! Simply book a discovery call with me here!

And if you haven’t already, please do go and join my Like Minded Business Owners Facebook group. It’s such a great community of people who are so willing cheer each other on!

Or you can DM me on Instagram or send me an email jenn@jenndonovan.com.au

I wish to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land, the Yorta Yorta People, on which I conduct my business today and pay my respects to their Elders past and present. I extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples reading this blog post today.

About the Author:

Jenn Donovan of Social Media & Marketing Australia.  Jenn’s an expert marketing coach and mentor from rural NSW. She is all about empowering business owners to earn what they’re worth so they can make a bigger difference in the world.  The Founder of Buy From a Bush Business, Co-Founder of Spend With Us – Buy From a Bush Business Marketplace and host of the very popular podcast Small Business Made Simple, Jenn is all about community and humans interacting with humans!  H2H Marketing – human to human marketing. Jenn talks the talk but importantly walks the walk! Jenn’s online community is over 320,000 with her famous Facebook Group currently at almost 365,000 members and still growing every day.  She’s the mayor of her own little online city!

Get in touch – www.socialmediaandmarketing.com.au

On Instagram – @jenndonovan_

On Facebook – Jenn Donovan

Or on LinkedIn as Jenn Donovan

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